Chloe Sevigny Interview Magazine

SB :: Speaking of Hollywood, how do you feel about all the tabloid magazines?CS :: I don’t appear in them that often. When I do they’re usually taking a dig at my personal style, which can be hurtful. But I’ve learned to laugh it off. For some reason I keep getting photographed in the parking lot at [West Hollywood restaurant] Hugo’s. And I am always wearing short skirts, which always seem to be blowing up. [laughs] There are all these photos online of my panties!SB :: What do you think of all the celeb reality TV shows?CS :: I would like to go on Colonial House. I think I’d really excel at it.SB :: Really? I saw it excerpted on Oprah, and it looked really hard.CS :: I think I would be able to survive. The one thing I wouldn’t be able to live without, though, is tweezers.SB :: Do you feel that you’re limited because you’re known as such an indie-movie icon? CS :: I’ve sort of dug my own grave in a way as "the indie girl." I’ve played so many different parts within that realm.

Chloe Sevigny‘s taste for all things bold – in the roles she picks, the choices she makes, and the clothes she wears – set her apart from the start. And in an era when the debate over "traditional values" is scarier than ever, she’s still bucking convention. Chloe Sevigny, 31, is interviewed by actress Selma Blair in the May 2006 issue of Interview Magazine. Read the fullarticle after the jump!

With Chloe Sevigny‘s share of movie jaw-droppers firmly established, her next surprise is a turn as a polygamist’s shopaholic wife in this season’s TV sex whopper. It’s all in a day’s work for a nice girl from Connecticut.

Chloe Sevigny, By: Selma Blair

Interview Magazine May 2006

SELMA BLAIR :: In what part of Los Angeles do you shoot your new TV series, Big Love?CHLOE SEVIGNY :: In Santa Clarita.SB :: Where the fudge is that?CS :: Have you ever been to Magic Mountain?SB :: Oh, my God. It’s up in Valencia?CS :: Yes. It’s a 45-minute drive to and from Hollywood.SB :: It really looks like Utah on the show.CS :: Every day we shot for at least 10 hours. Five days a week for six months. It’s the most I’ve ever worked in my entire life. It’s the first time I felt like I really earned the money I made. It’s very taxing when you’re doing an episode every two weeks. It’s a lot of shooting.SB :: Was there certain underwear you had to wear on the show?CS :: It’s the kind that Mormons wear.SB :: But you’re not a Mormon on the show.CS :: No. We’re polygamists. We’re more like Mormon fundamentalists. We’re shunned. We can’t go into the temples, and the Mormons don’t acknowledge us as Mormons—or Latter-day Saints, as they prefer to say.SB :: Your character dresses pretty fundamentally.CS :: I do.SB :: Your braid on the show is perfect!CS :: My own hair’s not that long. I had a little help with some extensions. But I didn’t want to cut my hair. The fundamentalist women who live on these compounds never do. They believe their hair is their crown.SB :: Polygamy is illegal, but you don’t go to jail.CS :: No. The problem with polygamy is that the people aren’t being prosscuted. These young girls grow up not knowing anything else or anyone outside of their community and have no way of escaping this lifestyle. The list goes on and on about how these women and girls are preyed upon, and the incest, and God knows what else. In these compounds even some of the law enforcers are practicing polygamists. So there’s nobody to make arrests. I don’t know where they’re going to take the story. We didn’t get to read the whole season early on. We basically read episode by episode. When we first shot the pilot, I said, "Oh, I’m going to play this character like she’s really lazy." And then in the next episode, I was fixing a garbage disposal. I love that! I wish I had known about my mechanical abilities earlier; I would have worked that in somehow. You really have to stay on your toes, because they throw stuff at you. SB :: How do you see your character?CS :: She’s likable, but she’s also the character you love to hate. She stirs up trouble.SB :: Well, that should keep it interesting. This is your first TV series.CS :: It is. But I did do an after-school special when I was a child. I was just an extra on the playground. The show was about a young girl who buys a bunny—she always goes to the vet to play with these bunnies—and a man molests her.SB :: They don’t do after-school specials like that anymore.CS :: [laughs] Oh, no!SB :: They don’t do the real thing anymore. Eating disorders are about as deep as they go.CS :: I know.SB :: A few years back, when you had your Oscar nomination for Boys Don’t Cry [1999], people thought of you as this iconic fashion girl. A glamour girl. People pigeonholed you as this indie kind of actress. And now you go and do Big Love, where you’re the most simple, the most basic, honest person, a young married woman who happens to have two sister-wives. There’s no categorizing you in the new show. Meanwhile, your co-stars are amazing. Did you love them?CS :: Mmm.SB :: Just say yes. You’re supposed to lie if you don’t.CS :: No, I do! I do love them! Especially Jeanne Tripplehorn. I shouldn’t pick favorites, should I? We had a great time making the show. It’s been around two years in the making. After we shot the pilot we had to wait for a year. It’s been a long haul for all of us. We all still get along.SB :: What’s been the best thing about doing the show?CS :: Having a great role to play, finally. I’ve been doing all these bit parts since Boys Don’t Cry, and I’ve been really frustrated with the competition.SB :: I always thought of polygamists as being so backward, and here you’re portraying a family that’s strangely functional. They seem to have the same kind of morals that I might have—if I had morals, [laughs]CS :: People are going to be very confused by the show for those reasons.SB :: That’s what I love about it. It’s hard to judge these people when they’re in their own community. They don’t resemble the weird environment they come from, which is very Mafia-like. Given your character’s background, how did she come out as normal as she did? She’s shopping in catalogues and everything—it’s sad that that’s what makes her normal, [laughs]CS :: Is that normal? I think she’s trying to fill some kind of void, like we all do. I call it retail therapy.SB :: Your character grew up in a communal atmosphere. What was your own childhood like?CS :: Really idyllic. I grew up in a small town in Connecticut, and I have a very close-knit family. My father passed away, but I speak to my mother every day on the phone, and my brother lives three blocks from me.SB :: Do you still enjoy going out?CS :: Not so much. I go out once a week. I’m really out of practice at Hollywood shindigs, where the chatter is basically "nonversations."SB :: Speaking of Hollywood, how do you feel about all the tabloid magazines?CS :: I don’t appear in them that often. When I do they’re usually taking a dig at my personal style, which can be hurtful. But I’ve learned to laugh it off. For some reason I keep getting photographed in the parking lot at [West Hollywood restaurant] Hugo’s. And I am always wearing short skirts, which always seem to be blowing up. [laughs] There are all these photos online of my panties!SB :: Did you ever study acting?CS :: I did, but I don’t think it counts. I went to theater camp every summer of my childhood at the local YMCA and then at the local elementary school.SB :: What was your favorite production you put on at the YMCA?CS :: Probably The Wizard of Oz. SB :: Were you Dorothy or the Lion?CS :: I was the Scarecrow. I was Annie in Annie’, I was Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun; and I was Aunt Eller in Oklahoma!SB :: So you sang.CS :: I sang a lot better when I was a child, but all my friends encourage me to sing. I’m quite good at mimicking other people’s voices.SB :: You could play one of the Andrews Sisters.CS :: [laughs] I’d really like to do a musical.SB :: Did you ever play a sport?CS :: Softball.SB :: No.CS :: Yeah, I was really good!SB :: I thought maybe lacrosse or something, out there in Connecticut.CS :: I didn’t play any of the really preppy sports. No field hockey for me. When I was a high school freshman, I started on the softball team, but halfway through the season I quit. I fell in with an older crowd and was more into running around with them than having to stay after school to play softball.SB :: What do you think of all the celeb reality TV shows?CS :: I would like to go on Colonial House. I think I’d really excel at it.SB :: Really? I saw it excerpted on Oprah, and it looked really hard.CS :: I think I would be able to survive. The one thing I wouldn’t be able to live without, though, is tweezers.SB :: [laughs] Wait, let’s not break the mystique. I’m not going to let you go there, Chloe. You’re God’s perfect creation! You’re the legs from The Last Days of Disco [1998].CS :: Whenever I’m in the makeup trailer, they always have to yank the tweezers out of my hand.SB :: Have you ever done flat-out comedy?CS :: Never. I turned down a couple of roles like that in the past, and now I’m kind of kicking myself. I go out and audition for them all the time. They’re the main things I’m trying for, because people just don’t see me in that light. Comedies are very hard, but they’re something I really want to tackle. I’m going to keep making a fool of myself in the auditioning process until I land one.SB :: Do you feel that you’re limited because you’re known as such an indie-movie icon? CS :: I’ve sort of dug my own grave in a way as "the indie girl." I’ve played so many different parts within that realm.SB :: But you don’t want to give up that genre of film, do you?CS :: No, not at all. But I have just wrapped my first studio picture in a while.SB :: Zodiac, about the serial killer who terrified San Francisco a few decades ago.CS :: Yes. I had a very small part; I was the girlfriend. It was the first time I ever played that type of role, other than in Boys Don’t Cry—and I don’t think that one really counts as just "the girlfriend." SB :: You were the "girl girlfriend."CS :: For Zodiac I thought, Okay, I’ll take the part. It’s kind of a rite of passage. And if I was going to be a girlfriend to anybody, Jake Gyllenhaal is not too shabby.SB :: Moving on. Do you like shopping?CS :: Well, I did have a little stop-off at Yves Saint Laurent today.SB :: You did? What did you do?CS :: I bought a bag and a belt and a hat.SB :: And which is your favorite?CS :: Probably the hat.SB :: Do you keep all your things?CS :: I have a storage space filled with all my old stuff. And I have my closet in my mother’s house in Connecticut, and I have three big closets in my lovely new apartment in New York City. I am such a pack rat. Every now and then I sell off or trade some designer stuff, and then I wish I hadn’t. So I’ve just decided to keep everything, [laughs] SB :: Your wardrobe’s going to save cancer one day, because when you’re dead, your future daughter will auction it off, and it will get $40 million or so.CS :: No—I hope she wears it! Or she can wear it and then auction it.SB :: Do you dress differently in New York than in L.A.?CS :: In New York you can be kind of grungy or whatever, and people aren’t so crazed. In L.A. you think, Oh, there’s gonna be some studio exec or this or that person everywhere I go. It just makes me really paranoid.SB :: With the new series, you should be okay for a while.CS :: I’m not sure. I was having some breakdowns on the set, embarrassingly enough, [laughs]SB :: Oh, God.CS :: And I never thought I was the kind of actress that brings the work home or is tortured by her character or anything like that. But by the end of shooting the first season of Big Love, I was so ready to get as far away from it as possible.SB :: Well, prepare yourself for another six months, God willing.CS :: I’m trying.